Note: indicated routes are approximate. Use the official maps for
navigation.

Walls of Jerusalem National Park from the east

Most walks in Walls Of
Jerusalem National Park start from the Fish River carpark, just off Mersey
Forest Road, which runs along the east side of Lake Rowallan. However, Mersey
Forest Road was damaged by floods in 2016, and had not been repaired by early
2017, so this walk was planned with the next most accessible entrance in mind:
the Lake Fanny track, which approaches the park from the east. This alternative
also has the advantage of being closer to Hobart by road if you're coming from
the south.

While some of this walk follows the hardened track in the central Walls Of
Jerusalem area, a lot of it involves following a route along some very poorly
defined unofficial tracks in Bernes Valley. You'll need to be comfortable with
off-track navigation in order to do this walk. Bring your gaiters - the
Richea shrubs in
particular are very spiky. One of the options includes a kilometre or two of
scrub-bashing with no track of any kind.

To get to the start of the walk, turn off Highland Lakes Road on to Lake
Augusta Road at Liawenee. There's a carpark two or three kilometres past Lake
Augusta.

The walk starts from the carpark, and initially follows the Lake Fanny
Track. You're probably better off walking around the south of Ada Lagoon, but
you can also walk around the north side, cross a little bridge and meet the
Lake Fanny track again by following the shore around. The track is very
distinct to begin with, but becomes much less so the closer you get to Lake
Fanny. We found a good campsite for three or four tents at Talleh Lagoon, about
8km from the carpark.

The most civilised start to day two would have been to backtrack a few
hundred metres and take the track south towards Theresa Lagoon and the
less-than-imaginatively named "Hut Five". However, we opted to scratch our
off-track navigation itches (and limbs) by following the rest of the track to
Lake Fanny, and then heading off through the scrub to the south-west (orange
line on the map above). This took us over a ridge and down to the north-west
end of Lake Sally. It was pretty slow going, but thankfully the densest scrub
was on the downhill side. It's worth noting that we opted for the more
civilised route on the way back.

From Lake Sally it's a matter of walking up the Bernes valley, past Lake
Sonja, Lake Solveig and around the east side of Lake Ball. The track is often
indistinct or absent, and some areas are boggy, but it's reasonably easy
going.

From Lake Ball we headed north up the slope to Dixons Kingdom Hut. Our plan
was to camp in the area around the hut, but after dark it became apparent that
the local possums were going to be a real problem all night. Given that Wild
Dog Creek was only a few kilometres away on a very good track, and that we had
enough moonlight to comfortably walk by, we decided to move camp after
dinner.

The moonlight walk ended up being a highlight of the trip. The track between
Dixons Kingdom Hut and the Wild Dog Creek campsite took us through the
spectacular centre of the park, with all its peaks and walls looming in the
moonlight.

At Wild Dog Creek we set up camp, with a plan to spend the next couple of
days doing day walks. The weather forecast indicated that we were probably in
for some wet weather, so having a good base camp where we could wait out any
bad weather seemed like a good idea too.

After three nights there we packed up and embarked on the return section of
the loop, making camp again at Lake Adelaide.

From Lake Adelaide we followed a reasonable track back to lake Ball, and
then retraced our steps back past Lake Solveig and Lake Sonja. We didn't much
like the prospect of scrub-bashing back up the ridge towards Lake Fanny, so we
continued past Lake Sally towards Hut Five, and then followed the track up past
Powena Creek and Theresa Lagoon to camp at our initial campsite at Talleh
Lagoon. The last day was a short walk out to the carpark.